What matters the most ?

Sorry for the lame, obvious catchy line intended to attract readers :)

I don't mean to ask this question in the grand scheme of life.  But more specific in one's career's growth.  Especially in a company with thousands of employees.  What do you think matters the most ? What makes a person standout in the crowd ?  While most folks burn out at middle management, and others just give up and move to other business, there are quite a few who stick it out in their chosen field, and grow up in a company , often reaching to the peak before they retire. I was pondering over this issue, talking to one of my friends the other day, and he said, there was some special "factor" required for a person to get noticed, to move into premium roles like, a VP or SVP.  So what's this "factor" that differentiates one person from the herd ?

Here are some obvious answers to this:

1. Skill: While this may sound to be the most obvious, IMO, this can take you only so far.  At some stage in your career, you reach a place where everybody around you are equally skilled in a particular line of work as you are, if not more than you.  While it really helps move your career in leaps in the initial stages, this cannot propel you all the way to the top, unless you are in a very small company, or you happen to be one of the initial founders.

2. Hard Work: This is might tie with no.1 as the most obvious answer.  A really worthy quality to have .  You might have all the skill set in the world, but none of them are useful, if you don't work hard and keep it honed.  But again, I've seen hundreds of employees who are damn hard workers, but they just wait and stagnate.  Most senior management see them as necessary folks with no life of their own.  This is the worst category to be in, if this is one's sole strength, for he is in the danger of depression/burnout much sooner than others.

3. Focus: Now, this is a particularly interesting talent to have.  Many people can be hardworking or skilled, but not everyone is focused on the task at hand.  I've seen many skilled engineers while away their time browsing random web pages or really hard working men, staying up until 11 in the night, with no productivity to show.  So, focus is indeed important.  But it cannot be a unique talent on its own.  Its often best complimented with the above two points.

So, now, coming back to the topic title, IMO, the one talent that differentiates a person from the crowd is.... 

4. Consistency:  Yes.  You heard it right.  IMO, this is the most important factor is differentiating a leader from the herd.  "How consistent you are in executing the task given to you !"

Its not enough to be skilled.  "Are you consistently able to hone your skillet over a period of time, and remain in business ? "

Its not enough to work hard for one stretch. "Can you do it consistently until the goal is accomplished?" 

Its not enough to be focused at one given task for a while and finish it.  "Can you consistently focus on the tasks given to you day after day without getting distracted ?"

IMO, this is what differentiates leaders form the herd.  They give consistent results, time after time.  They hone their skill-sets regularly, they are hard working and focused over a longer period of time than most.

So, if there are any of you who think you have been mistreated in-spite of being skilled, hardworking or focused at your job, ask  this to yourself - 'are you consistent enough' ?

(link to the image: http://profilestopartners.com/2011/09/10/who-is-ready-to-lead-your-company/leader-standing-out-from-crowd/)

Pomodoro Technique

People assume that, being an Engineer in the software development field, I spend all my time working on some of the most complex and interesting problems out there.  While its true to some extent, the reality is that, its not always. Some days are filled creative tasks like finding obscure bugs, brainstorming design decisions etc., which really makes you glad you choose this field.  But, time to time, on some days, even us engineers are subjected to the "non-grey cell consuming", soul crushing , boring , mundane tasks.  And the irony is, you can't have one without the other.

Now, based on my work experience so far, I found that I have a tendency to procrastinate all these mundane not-so interesting work until the last minute.  And one fine day I walk into my office, open my office email, and BOOM ! my manager needs the report in the next hour.  You start cursing yourself for neglecting it so long, and start working on it asap ignoring even that cup of coffee you brought in to drink.  Needless to say, it causes lot of stress, and also takes valuable time away from more important things that has to be attended to on that day.  I tried many ways to get around this problem, and one of the most effective way, that really works for me, is the pomodoro technique.

In a nutshell, quoting straight from wikipedia:

The technique uses a timer to break down periods of work into 25-minute intervals called 'Pomodori' (from the Italian word for 'tomatoes') separated by breaks. 

So, this is how I tackle these mundane/routine tasks at my office these days:

1. First thing in the morning, make a TODO list of the tasks to be completed.

2. Pick the least interesting / mundane tasks and fit all of them into one of the day slots (usually post lunch, unless its required to be completed before that) 

3. Before beginning the task, start a timer of 25 mins and start working on it.

4. Take a break for 10 mins, and then start another timer of 25 mins and continue to work, so on until the task is completed.

The reason this has been working, in my opinion, is that, it brings in a psychological relief to me.  When I start a timer for 25 mins, I'm telling my mind that - "hey its ok, even if the work is boring, I've to survive it only for the next 25 mins".  It has so happened that sometimes, at the end of the 25 mins, the work no longer seems boring , and instead of the 10 min break, I just go ahead and finish it. 

If you have any other techniques to battle the routine/mundane tasks, put them in the comments below.   Cheers !

(link to the original image:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Il_pomodoro.jpg/220px-Il_pomodoro.jpg)

Taxonomy of the manager species !

Here's a brief list of the kind of managers I've got the opportunity to work for in my career so far:

1. Control Freak - Thinks he owns you.  Controls every minute detail of your work.  Would throw a tantrum if you don't include him in emails.  Will cause a ruckus if you spring a surprise at him, always wants to be the one in control and hates anyone who challenges his authority.  You can grow as long as you don't threaten his position.

2. The Dude - He still thinks he's in his twenties.  Makes lewd jokes and remarks about fellow colleagues.  Discusses the latest pop videos , movies, rock concerts to show he's one in the gang.  Tries too hard to impress everyone and takes everything as a joke.  Believes in team work.  If you are under one of these "Dude's" find the nearest exit and bail out.  Unless you like splitting tab for the beer at TGIF !

3. The "Delegator" -  Believes everyone knows their job. Gives little guidance or support to the team.  His way of conflict management is to make everyone shake hands with each other. Does little team management.  Acknowledges your existence once in a while (mostly when you put down your papers).  Believes that his job ends at delegation and collecting status reports.  You learn the art of ownership under such people, but he'll do little to take your career forward.

4. The "Wannabe" -  This is by far the worst kind.  Runs his team on the principles laid down by "Philip Kotler" , and quotes frequently from popular "self help" books.  Always on a high of meeting deadlines and always on one toe trying to get things to perfection.  Believes in the company values, would sell his liver if the bosses ask and expects to get the corner office by hook or crook.  Will try everything in his capacity to achieve his goals.  Easy to spot - they come in formals , keep using words like 'in the loop', 'synergize' etc, usually the first to come to office and the last to leave.  Can be seen hanging around on weekends as well, if you dare to step in.  These are another bunch to avoid !

PS: Just my opinion, not intended to offend anybody !!

Oh Well....I got promoted !!

YAY !!

Got promoted to Senior Engineer.  Nice happy occasion.  It was quite some time since I had been promoted - maybe 3 years I guess.  Spoke to some of my family members, but I had to sugarcoat my new role - you know, Senior Engineer in India, is a post, you get after 2 years into the job.  Not after 8 years.  Funny how much difference the cultures make.

Anyway, this is good news for a many reasons.  First, I don't need to worry about the next promotion for atleast another couple of years.  So , it means, I can just focus on my job, and not worry about impressing anyone.   Second, I don't need to work my ass off pulling 16 hour work days.  Working for 10 hours as I do generally and pulling in a late night whenever the work demands should suffice.  Its really refreshing to get out of the rat race and finally be able to do what I want.  Which is write good programs, learn some interesting stuff on directx, learn some basic photography with my DSLR, and get to explore this country I'm living in currently - Korea.  Not to mention , spend more time with my wife and daughter along the way :)

Oh by the way, I plan to shift this blog wordpress from blogspot in sometime.  Still figuring things out on how to use Wordpress.  The main reason of the shift is the wordpress support on android and well, I see that its much more robust than blogger.  Only downer is that it doesn't allow me to post google ads.  Not that, I've too many readers here who would make me rich.  Are there ? lol !  Also, another idea is to keep this blog as it is, and have another blog in wordpress to talk mostly about my technical ramblings.  Let me see how it all works out.

Anyway, signing off for now....good night !

Life as an Engineer in South Korea - Part 1

Its quite some time since I've updated this blog.  I can come with a multitude of reasons, but honestly deep down I know its due to sheer laziness.  Sorry for that (as if you are waiting with baited breath he he).  

Anyway,  its close to three months since I entered this beautiful place and I thought of writing a bit about it here.  Usually we get enough information about Indian Engineers in US/UK or any other English speaking countries.  But information about Indian Engineers in Korea is hard to come by on WWW.  So, hopefully, this will give some insight into aspiring Engineers who're looking to take up employment here.  I'll give the information in parts.  In this post, I'll address some concerns I had before coming here (these are very common, and most people would've them too).

For the uninitiated, I recently took up job as an Engineer at one of the most prominent companies of S.Korea (no cookies for guessing ;) ) in Suwon City , S.Korea.  I had lot of apprehensions initially about accepting the job offer and life in general, at a country where, finding someone who speaks English, is equivalent to finding someone who likes Tees Maar Khan in India.  Sorry for the bad punchline, I'm not so good with analogies !

Some of the most common concerns I had were in the below areas - 

1. Food
2. Working long hours 
3. Harsh climate 
4. Language Barrier
5. Cost of Living

Let me address them one by one.

1. Food - Food is not an issue so far, mainly because we had brought most of our Indian groceries with us here.  So I get to eat delicious Indian food daily.  And my wife seems to have found an otherwise previously undiscovered love for cooking delicious dishes deep inside her, which works greatly to my advantage.  Add to that, my office has a good, well stocked, Indian Cafeteria, which offers decent Indian vegetarian meals.  There are some pizza places, where one can order vegetarian pizzas as well.  You have a couple of Indian restaurants as well in Suwon where you can find vegetarian food.  But as a whole, being a veggie, one is at a disadvantage here.  Some of the vegetables like green beans are very very hard to find, Indian  stores are few and far , and even if you do come across the few Indian stores, Indian Rice cost like $22 for 5kgs !  So, if you are an Indian veggie, life maybe a bit tough, if you don't have enough groceries with you and your company doesn't provide Indian food.  You might find it tough to socialize with your Korean colleagues as well, as, being a veggie, you will always stick out like a sore thumb in office parties and lunch/dinner treats.  

2. Working Long Hours - This seems to be a common misconception outside of Korea.  Yes, hours are long only if you make them to be.   So far, nobody at my office has told me to stay back and work for extra hours.  In fact,it has been quite the opposite, I'm encouraged to work smart and not slog.  But this might vary across companies.  But, in general, from what I've noticed, Koreans are hardworking people.  They don't mind staying long hours in office, and they are pleased if you stay back too. 

3. Harsh climate - Coming from the air conditioned weather of Bangalore, the weather here in S.Korea does seem harsh at times.  The cold can go as bad as -16 , literally forcing you to stay indoors.  But nothing , a couple of hot pakoras with warm coffee and a thick sweater and blanket can't solve.  If you are having trouble with harsh winters, this might be an issue for you.  I've heard the summers can be nasty too, yet to experience it, so no comments yet !

4. Language Barrier - Well this is indeed a huge problem.  So much that, sometimes I fear it can potentially cause social isolation and induce loneliness.  There are some Indian families around in the city of Suwon, but the knowledge of local language is needed the most, especially when you go out to shop or roam around, where, a trivial task like asking for that grocery you want, or  checking out directions can be a huge hassle.  In office, not knowing the language can put you in a great disadvantage compared to your peers.  You develop a frustrating sense of dependency on your co-workers for even insignificant stuff like getting your computer repaired, paying your bills (At least the first few times) etc.   Meetings and most of the technical training happen in native Korean, and you miss out on them as well.  So, unless you are prepared to spend time and efforts to learn Korean, you might want to re-think about a long term career here.  I've started to train myself on Korean with some information available on web, planning to attend some classes shortly as well. 

5. Cost of Living - Yes, S.Korea is expensive compared to India or China and almost as costly as US in some aspects.  Renting an apartment is very expensive, so are vegetables and other groceries. Same goes for clothes and other household items.  But, I received a fully furnished apartment as part of my job offer from my Employer due to which I'm relatively at a safer side. Kid's education is another thing to look out for.  Monthly fees can cost you upwards of $500 in an English school for simple Kindergarten education (excluding initial deposit, travel/books/uniform and other such miscellaneous expenses).  I've not checked for primary schools, but my guess would be that it would be much more.  Medical Expenses, cost a lot too from what I heard, but there's a medical program from govt., which is kind of mandatory (I assume), which covers most of the regular ailments.  The premium for that is quite less, so unless you are illness-prone, you should be able to get along.  To sum it up,  without the benefits of housing, accepting a job in S.Korea, especially for people from India , can be daunting since the cost of living here is very high compared back home.

So that's a brief summary based on my 3 months of living here.  I'll try to update the blog more regularly whenever I get free time.  Catch you later :)

Pathetic state of 'Project Management' in silicon valley of India

I had a heated exchange with my boss today leaving me very exhausted mentally and irritated to some extent.  The worst part is, no matter how hard I try, I just cannot help but bring this to home - which results in a nasty snowballing effect of adding more stress as everybody else is stressed out at home when they see me grumpy.

     I can make a blog and fill it up with 100 posts about how much office work contribute to stress for a working individual in India.  Especially in the software industry.  The main reason is the disagreement and the way its handled in our so called 'modern offices'.  Have an issue with your manager, well the way to sort it out is to sit for hour long lectures on anything from 'Empowerment' to 'Turning around', 'innovation' and more management terms, which you never use in your daily life.  Don't agree with your boss/co-worker, the official way is to schedule a skip level meeting, where invariably you are taught lessons on how to get along with your boss/colleagues by your skip level manager.  You can run from pillar to post, but the end message is the same - "Just stick to the plan and get on with your work.  Your opinions can be shoved up your behind for all we care !"

    Sad really ! One of my colleagues was telling me today that "people don't leave companies, they leave managers".  And its so true.  One of the main reasons I attribute this pathetic state of project/resource management in India is to the vastly unskilled/undeserving pool of managers.  These guys were the engineering graduates of the late 90s or the early 2000s, who entered the industry during the 'dot-com boom'.  At that time, attrition was so high, a guy with 4 years of experience was the tech lead, a guy with 2 years of experience as tech lead became a manager and so on.  Naturally when the tide is slowing down and getting into a state of normalization, we have all these vast pool of people who are stuck at mid-level/upper level management positions, who are so unskilled in technical areas, you've no option but to continue using them.  And now we are beyond the previous "maintenance" projects, getting more and more of end to end development and guess who manages these ? The previously unskilled pool !

    Most of these so called 'project or resource managers', still work by the age old method of bribe/blackmail/carrot & stick for employee retention / satisfaction.  Some of the popular methods of making an employee "contribute" more to the company:

1. On-site opportunity: By far the most popular one.  Find a grumpy employee not happy with his salary/work/environment or whatever, forget about spending time at counselling him to find the root cause, just throw in the assurance of sending him onsite and rest assured he'll fall in place.  Any place from Singapore to Buenos Aires will do, as long as him/his wife and his kid's tickets are paid for and he is allowed to stay back long enough to change his location in facebook profile and paste pics about his onsite spoils.  No matter how stupid his outing was or how bad his new fake accent is.

2. Contractual obligations:  Worried about losing your fresh talent jumping onto other companies ? Worried that all you taught to the fresh minds are being stolen away by other companies at your expense ?  Don't bother about improving your in house work culture or incentives to make them stay.  Throw in a complicated contract which could result in the employee paying a hefty sum of money in case he leaves you.  You can even throw in an advocate at the time of making the contract to really strike fear into their hearts.  For best results visit the innermost parts of India where students are actually ready to sign their life off for an opportunity to work in a s/w company.  Use their poor financial situation complete to your advantage! Now that's how geniuses in HR roll yo !

3. Ridiculous notice periods:  I heard that the notice period in US is usually two weeks.  Well, welcome to Bangalore ! Here it varies any time between 2 months to 6 months depending on which company you are in.  Impossible to retain an employee thanks to your sucky company policies ? Well let us make it such that its not possible for them to find employment anywhere either.  'You can't lose if you don't play!'

4. Unbelievable lateral hikes:  Finding trouble poaching talent with your sucky bureaucratic company policies ? Tired of being rejected by anyone who's able to write a program to print "hello world" without compiler warnings or errors ? Well, here's the instant solution - give them a ridiculously high package which is more than twice the amount another poor loyal guy with the exact same skill set and experience is making at your company.  Add a signing bonus as an icing on the cake to seal the deal.  Rest assured you'll land that guy for your next induction program.  Now, to stick to your process of suckiness, ensure that his future hikes are dramatically reduced to fractions lesser than one, and depend on point 1,2 or 3 for his retention.  Also, don't bother about normalizing the salary of that honest/loyal engineer stuck with your company.  What kind of a loser sticks to a company beyond 2 years eh ?

If you think I'm trying to vent out my frustration or being sarcastic, you are free to walk in and join any software company in Bangalore and see if for yourself.  Don't bother checking the logic or the reasoning behind any of these points, unless you are in mood for some real "coaching" on how "you should first ask yourself what you've done for the company before you ask what the company has done for you" !